Last Friday, Gauteng premier David Makhura painted himself into a legal and political corner by firing health MEC Bandile Masuku.
He "discharged" him because the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) found that Masuku had “failed to execute his functions in compliance with the constitution and the Public Finance Management Act”. What a load of c**p!
The SIU report did not find any wrongdoing by Masuku, end of story. It has no business determining ethical or moral paucities of politicians, nor should it concern itself with matters of constitutionality on actions of public office bearers. By right, Masuku is throwing the book at the SIU, and by extension, Makhura. The embattled and legally out of depth premier says the MEC may still be reappointed later, in essence admitting to not knowing what he is doing.
Since Masuku opted to take the SIU findings on legal review, nothing pressured the premier to institute administrative action until this was completed. In any event, he was placed on leave by the provincial executive committee (PEC) of the ANC (another problem on its own), not him. Which process, I understand, was not complete.
Why the haste to act on an incomplete report and process? Why tarnish his own image by violating Masuku’s rights to fair administrative process? Better still, why would you actually undermine the law by interfering with an ongoing investigation?
I suspect this tactic has been Makhura’s trusted manner to wrangle himself out of taking responsibility and leadership. He prefers to throw colleagues and aides under the bus instead. The fate of MECs Mamolebatsi Bopape, Qedani Mahlangu and now Masuku are glaring examples. On this one, he appears to have misstepped badly.
Ordinarily, I would instantly shrug off as nonsense any comparison of the democratic government of Nelson Mandela with the apartheid government pre-1994. The two, I would say, are distinguishable as day and night. Recently though, especially where matters legal encounter the political, I reluctantly concede, similarities are emerging.
An American legal mind, professor Stephen Ellmann, describes the apartheid government aptly by stating that it was simply lawless.
“The blight of apartheid was partly its horrendous discrimination, but also its lawlessness. South Africa was lawless in the bluntest sense, as its rulers maintained their power with the help of death squads and torturers. But it was also lawless, or at least unlawful, in a broader … way: the rule of law did not hold in South Africa. Apartheid … ruled by law,… but the law that applied to black people…was not a law of limits but of powers.”
I venture to say justice in SA today is accessible only to the rich with the ever-present racist touch. Prisons, for example, are full of citizens serving time but not sentenced. Our prison population is said be about 48,000 inmates awaiting trial. They cannot afford bail, they have no representation or just simply cannot access the law, let alone justice.
For those who can, the likes of Masuku, it seems they may not know justice either. They’re at the mercy of political favours or the grace of others.
Masuku is Makhura’s sacrificial lamb that has come back to haunt him. The first citizen of SA’s R146bn-budget economic hub and home to 15.5m residents has effectively sealed his fate as a failed politician. Beyond that, he has scripted his own chapter in the ever-bulging book of lawlessness in democratic SA, an albatross that will hang heavy on his neck till he exits office.
How sad. Just as we thought the overthrow of apartheid was an abolition of injustices and the establishment of the rule of law.
• Xaba is a Johannesburg-based media practitioner.
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